SOCIAL MEDIA

I thought I would share a quick and simple holiday gift guide with you in case you were still looking for Christmas gift ideas. I could go on all day about fun little trinkets but these are the items that my girls have specifically asked for.

Lego Friends- My girls love Legos! They aren't too picky. I could get them any set
and they would be happy. Legos are one thing my kids consistently play with all year round.

Scruff a luv-
This is the one thing my kids did not actually ask for but one of my
friends told me about it for her daughter and I thought I needed to get
one too. Basically it is a sad ratted mess of a ball. You
adopt it, bathe it, brush it, and show a little TLC to discover what
your animal is.

Barbie Jeep- My youngest is dying for a barbie jeep. NOT a car, a jeep. She is very specific. 😂

Pomsies- I don't even know if my daughter knows what this does. She just saw it in an ad and has been dead set on it ever since. After investigating I found it to be a modern day Furbie like toy.

Tamagotchis-
I remember playing with these (and the Giga pets) as a kid so when I
saw these I knew I had to get some for the kids. I got them some green
ones when Toys R us was going out of business. However, Amazon has some
that are a lot cuter than the ones I got lol.

LOL doll
- My girls currently only have one of these each (most because I am
cheap and they are so expensive for the tiny dolls) but they keep asking
for more. I chatted with Santa and I think there's a good chance he
might be adding one of them to each of their stockings. But I'm just
gonna throw out that the 3 pack at Target works nicely for my 3
kids 😜

Fuzzy socks-
One thing my girls got from me was my love of fuzzy socks. None of us
like to be cold and there's not much better than being bundled up and
having cozy socks on. These are usually on sale for $1 each at Old Navy
on black Friday. I haven't checked if they will be this year so don't
hold me to that price.

Polly Pockets-
I remember telling my friends a couple months ago how much I wished
they would come out with Polly Pockets because I loved them as a kid. I
even went as far as checking ebay to get some vintage ones for the girls, but the
ebay prices were steep. I was sooooo excited when they brought them
back. (Seriously, every birthday party the girls have been invited to
we've been giving these as gifts) were getting the pink flamingo and the
yellow sandcastle.

Kikilu Bags- My girls love my back pack bags (as they call them). They have little purses but they really want a back pack bag. Kikilu just came out with some adorable mini bags in black, grey, and pink!

There you have it. My list of items that the girls have been asking for this year. I may be living through them this Christmas as I give them all my favorite childhood toys...I wonder if they will let me play along with them. 😊

It's no secret that we've been working on replacing the plastic in our kitchen with non-toxic items. We also tossed out all of our non-stick cookware. We were originally planning on getting a new set but after researching which set to get we realized all non-stick is pretty toxic, especially when scratched... Ours was missing a lot of the lining on the bottom due to scratches, so apparently we had been eating all those harmful toxins.

Cookware
If you are looking for a safer/non-toxic cookware option, the top two non-toxic recommendations are stainless steel and cast iron. I recommend Lodge for cast iron. I tried a no name brand to save money and it just didn't work the same.

Pyrex
We use a lot of Pyrex in our house in the form of mixing bowls, casserole dishes, bread pans, and now food storage containers. We were previously using plastic containers and Tupperware items to store AND reheat our food. It is highly recommended that if you choose to store your food in plastic that you don't microwave food in them...When I found this out I talked with all my friends and apparently they had already known that microwaving in plastic was a big no, no, lol. Just in case one of you are like me and didn't know, I thought I'd mention it. You learn something new everyday right!

Pyrex has a new line called Pyrex Ultimate that has glass containers with both glass and silicone lids. Even the lids are plastic free! Pura Stainless Waterbottles
I mentioned these before here in my kids kitchen items post. We have two different water bottles for the girls, insulated and the sport style for dance. My husband and I each have a larger one of these as well and we love them!

Get it Right Silicone utensils
I love GIR utensils! They are easy to cook with and they have soooo many fun colors to choose from! I decided to get a bright rainbow of colored utensils for my kitchen! My personal favorite is the spoonula!

Bamboo Utensils
We have a small basic set of bamboo utensils we found at ROSS.

Bamboo Cutting Board
I have been wanting a bamboo cutting board for a while. We found ours at Homegoods. I love that bamboo is considered more sanitary because there are fewer knife marks left in bamboo leaving less room for bacteria to hide!Glass cups
Honestly we just barely got glass cups like 6 months ago at ROSS. We were using plastic cups because we were scared kids would climb cabinets and break them. My kids are slightly older now, however, we have only had one glass break but it had nothing to do with my kids lol.
(to see our kids cups and dinnerware choices check out my kid plastic free post)

Stainless Steel Strainer
We really like this one that we got at target. It's a lot smaller than our previous plastic one was but we've never had an issue with it being to small for our family of 5. Even when feeding guests.

We are still working towards being plastic free in the kitchen. But I thought I would share some of our favorite items so far. I hope this post was helpful!

If you follow me on Instagram you may already know that we are making the switch away from plastic in our kitchen.

Ive gotten a lot of questions about why. I don't want to go into too many details of why, because that is not the main point of this post. However, long story short while searching for new cookware we learned that nonstick was actually a lot worse than I thought. I had always heard that it wasn't very good for you, but I didn't really understand or realize how bad. So we threw out all our old scratched up non stick and replaced it with safer options (I'll share more on that later.)

As I was learning about cookware I started coming across a lot of information about plastics being harmful as well. Yes, even BPA free plastics have people questioning if they are really safe. We decided that we wanted to skip plastic all together and try to find the best and safest options out there for our family, especially our kids.

Here are the kids items that we found!

1. Pura Stainless

Pura has stainless steel water bottles for the WHOLE family. They are also the ONLY water bottle company I have found that is 100% plastic free! I love that they have interchanging lids, from bottle tops, to sippy cups, straws, and sports lids! You can keep the same bottle for years and years and just change out the top as your kid grows! Everyone in our family has at least one of these water bottles and they are a huge hit. They have insulated and non insulated options as well! If you want to read more about it here is their FAQ page

2. Bobo & Boo

Bobo and boo is a bamboo dinnerware small shop that come in lots of fun colors! My girls love the colors and they are able to safely add color with only having .05% of food safe mineral pigment. So they are not painted or coated in anything! They are BPA, PVC, Phthalate, Lead, Cadmium, and Mercury free. They do have a trace amount of melamine in them which allows them to be top rack dishwasher safe. They are not microwave safe which doesn't bother me because we don't use the microwave much anyways. These bamboo sets are a very fun, cute, and affordable option. They have a very detailed FAQ page on their website that can answer all your nontoxic questions about their product!

3. Avanchy

Avanchy is another bamboo option. They are a little higher of a price point so we only have one of each of the toddler sized plates for my girls. I like that they have separated sections for runny side dishes so food doesn't "touch" (in case you also have one of those picky eaters). These are 100% Bamboo with no fillers. They are BPA, BPS, Lead, Phthalate, and Melamine Free. They are hand wash only and not microwave safe. And of course here is their FAQ page as well, if your anything like me you like to read all about products before you buy.

4. Snack Bags

Ok, so we haven't gotten these yet but they are on my list of things to get. The girls were bringing their lunch a lot earlier this year and I would love to have some reusable bags (esp with cute designs haha) instead of throwing away multiple plastic sandwich and snack backs everyday.

I hope these help you in your non plastic search. This post is obviously kid themed, but I plan to do another post soon about other/more kitchen items that we have switched out in our plastic free/ non toxic journey.

I have always wanted to get family pictures by the beach. Since we don't live near any beaches we have never had that opportunity. When we decided (AKA I finally convinced my husband) to go to the California beach for vacation I knew that was my chance.

I really liked our photographer. We used Maryrose Richards Photography. She was very friendly and great with my girls. If you're in SoCal or planning a trip to SoCal I would Recommend giving her a call.

Here are some of my top favorites from our beach family photos.

I am so glad that we got family photos on our vacation. I love that I can always have these to look back on.

After doing a favorite swimwear post for little girls, I was surprised to find that people requested that I do a swimwear post for little boys. Since I only have girls, boy land is pretty foreign to me. 😂

After searching a bit these are what I found that I really liked for little boys.

The girls and I are HUGE fans of swimming. If you are new to following us on Instagram you might not know that swimsuits are kinda a big deal to us. We spend almost every day of the summer at the pool. It is our favorite activity. We get asked often where we find our swimsuits. With spring break and warmer weather around the corner, I thought now would be a great time to share some of our favorites!

The girls don't personally own all of these swimsuits but they do own about half of them. The others are ones I've had my eyes on.